Director: Bryan Singer
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Duration: 138 minutes
X-Men: Apocalypse (DVD) – Movie Review
X-Men: Days of Future Past ‘softly’ rebooted the series back in 2014, by erasing all that happened in the original three movies, conveniently traveling back in time and erasing the flow of things to come, albeit ever so subtly. With X-Men: Apocalypse a new well-known foe from the X-Men universe is introduced, namely Apocalypse, who has lived for many centuries, and if allowed to continue his rampage, he’ll be alive for many more to come. Even though the creators of the previous movies often shaped the source material much to their liking and more than often not to the liking of the fans of the somewhat legendary X-Men, only time will tell if the current string of movies will stay true, or prove to be apocalyptic for the series.
Things have gone fairly quiet in the mutant filled world which is much like our own. In the 60’s an assassination attempt on the president was made by Erik Lensherr (Michael Fassbender), also known as Magneto, but this attempt was stopped by the group known as the X-Men, under the leadership of Charles Xavier (James McAvoy). Now, twenty years later, and with Charles in a wheelchair, he has transformed his mansion with only a few mutants, into a thriving school for his ‘gifted children’. Nonetheless, while things may seem beautiful from where he’s standing, in Egypt something rather dire is happening.
An ancient evil by the name Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac) is slowly woken up from a few millennia of sleep, and he is not all that pleased to see how the world has ended up. This godlike presence believes that the world, and all who roams on it, is created to worship him, and that other mutants should join him and serve him, simply to destroy and rebuild our current world. When Erik, who has been living a secluded life with his wife and daughter in Poland, is discovered as a mutant, things turn rather sour for him when the police attack him and his family, making him lose those he loves. Struck by grief, he decides to go on a rampage and before long Apocalypse is looking in his direction. It’s clear that the ancient presence is unrivaled, yet if they don’t stop him in time, the world will truly face an apocalypse.
Overall the pace of this movie is rather slow, while the last portion releases all balled up energy into a rather amusing conclusion. The dispensation of information is done in a proper and pleasant fashion, while making sure there is enough action and new characters to keep the hardcore fans at bay. While not all characters prove to be as convincing as everyone probably hoped for, it’s still fun to see many familiar faces finally being ported to the big (or little) screen.
Arguably the best actor for Charles Xavier was and still is Patrick Stewart, as he pretty much had all the right facial features for the task, as well as the proper charisma. Nonetheless, just like in the previous movie, James McAvoy does a superb job of playing the younger version of the school’s principal, and perhaps even rivals Patrick Stewart to a certain extent. That being said, the cast choices have remained pretty much the same as in the previous movie, and these ‘veterans’ all put down noteworthy acting performances. For the new cast members some interesting choices were made, and while not all of them might look that visually pleasing, they end up becoming a very coherent and well acting team. Sophie Turner, better known as Sansa Stark from Game of Thrones picks up the mantle of Jean Grey’s character and does so quite well, except for perhaps some sequences later on in the movie, which probably have to do with certain silly script choices as well as poorly edited scenes. Overall, things are quite sturdy in this area of the movie.
Something that seems to be a common issue with the DVD releases of 20th Century Fox is that they tend to neglect the special features on the DVDs compared to the Blu-ray version. Due to this, you’ll only find the ever-so-standard audio commentary option, a short gag reel and some images in the form of a gallery. While the movie stands decent on its own, there are many missed opportunities to either include the making of, or at least a featurette that highlights certain scenes and the techniques used to create said sequences of the movie.
Conclusion
X-Men: Apocalypse might leave a smaller impact than the first part of the reboot, but it does pack a healthy slightly mutated punch. Even with the lack of extra features, the movie proves to be interesting, and while the villain might not be exactly the same as its comic book counterpart, it still lives up to its reputation. Overall it’s clear that the new series will not follow the source material by the letter, but then again, if you stop comparing the story in X-Men: Apocalypse to the comic books and simply enjoy the flick, it probably won’t be the end of the world.
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